A POEM

COULDN’T BE INDIFFERENT

They wrote to men the following
“Indifference captures a female heart”
But I couldn’t be indifferent

I threw rocks at the Statue of Liberty
But I could not get arrested
Blind eye to freedom’s upskirt violation

I could not put aside
caring enough for something to want to show it
People and ideas and what history broke and did not fix

The groove I am in used to be a flat surface
That was trod over by what irked me
While I grumbled over what is left at the end of the day for yourself

But the shock transfusion of idealism electrified clogged veins
Made your face perform at a non-consensual theatre
And show your hand to those who also hold cards and have a stake in the game

A POEM

THE SPIRIT OF SALVAGE UNDERLINES A HEART

Don’t throw something away that is still good
That can still be used
Hold it until is worn and faithful and lowers blood pressure with just its presence

Lullaby a heart that expects your calm foreclosure on loneliness
And two can play at everything hurts more efficiently than one
The junkyard is not interested in this replenished affection

I won’t waste a valuable heart that is well nurtured, comforted, and maintained
By lovers that won’t let go
Although I expect diamond fatigue that places lumps of coal throughout

Much harder is what is kept by trial and error humans
Who have gratitude thumped into their noggin by assorted yesterday women over chipped kitchen tables with foldable legs

A POEM

A CHAMELEON MIND PROBED

Is that how your chameleon mind changes color and shape
Not as fast as a regular mind but deeper and more spontaneous
Flooding itself with colorful rise-up recollections
RIP memories whose original form is lost

Push pastor in playacting sermon past the spasms of transformation

Whether I’m right or whether I’m bright
And whether appetites shimmer and shift
Into fuller percentages of self-inflicted confusion
Fall as if dominoes but without end to the collapsing rows

They told me they looked into the chameleon mind but it moved too unpredictably and in too alien a way to be studied
They told me they dug down stubbornly when rooted out of their fixed spot of self

A POEM

DELIVERY OF ICE

That was me holding both of her hands while simultaneously avoiding her gaze
Because doing that that would have shattered the scene like the ice her gaze revealed
Of nothing, of a frozen place empty in a cold wasteland

Dropped off you in front of our next big disappointment
It isn’t yet open for the day but you can sit on the stone wall in front and visualize your next big disappointment
The madness of the surface your hand sticks to producing sour pain and disgust diminishing emotion

You will never know numbness of a deeper kind
The delicate voyeur of impertinence has stolen my mittens
Cascade of slights add up as combined weight on the back of form

I have never spent one second thinking about what made me the man I am
The man I was becoming and further became when she backed up the van outside and delivered ice in big blocks and in 40 pound bags
As if I bathed in your essence and in doing so joined the polar bear club

This cold expression is two fold
It doesn’t lift, it slows down, it penetrates
It comes across electronic communication and sitting next to you when time together is cut off abruptly by a suddenly remembered appointment somewhere else

A POEM

THAT’S NOT HOW BABIES ARE MADE

The miracle of birth breathes life into a pattern of destruction
And he wants to make that a love story
But a love story for one is not how babies are made
And great greasy feminine hands maul the pages of desire

She is the spokesmodel of those reluctant to cooperate
That is not how one is woken up from dreams of single cell life
Separations from the terrible peer group to spawn in its own stagnant bathwater

The hope of connection fizzles out in a puddle of refusal
He keeps missing the social cues and getting his pleasantries wrong
But that’s not how babies are made
And difficulty by scale when openly discussed this way is akin to swearing all is lost in a city of a million or more people

A POEM

THE NEXT THING SAID AFTER “I LOVE YOU”

I like to tell her “I love you”
But what is said next?
After I love you followed by a comma and an endearment (honey or darling)
A voice trails off into the hope of a silencing embrace

Words come in numbers and the numbers decrease in years
The acquisition of language backwards
The marriage of Gutenberg re-entering the cave
Draw me a picture, committed practitioner of love

I love you is a call in the night not cafe table conversation to be dropped among clinking cups and glasses, low hum of discourse, scurrying waitress action
Soft sounds in the night, obliteration smoothed over

For the package is unwrapped in a moment speeded away from
It is held and fondled as a calming habit
Marriage begins there, follow-up answer depends on the individual

Press a sense of humor into public service
You and me
Did you change after I love you or did I love you change you?
You and me

A POEM

EMPEROR

I never had a reason to believe I was the emperor of all between both of the poles and the equator
But nonetheless I did

The palace was in flames but now the fire is almost burnt out
Wood still crackles as the fire grits its teeth, growls , and pushes down another scorched section
The shell of external glory collapses on itself

The public target, the throne of self-parody
The crown wore without the force of the state behind it
In defiance of the force of how others feel about you

“I am the vanguard of everything” was how I explained my divine right
Holy self in late Lear finale defeat
Wandering like an old dementia man in a public place with fingers pointing

A POEM

MR CARMICHAEL IS THE SAD KIND OF CLOWN

Mr Carmichael told me lack of transport is not a valid excuse for absence
It is his job to say things like that

Mr Carmichael’s shoes are too big
They remind me of the oversized shoes of a clown
His face is always red
Bryce Kendall says that his father sees Mr Carmichael in a local bar he goes to
He is there a lot

Mr Carmichael’s wife makes love to another man
She makes no effort to hide this
After they are done, the wife and her lover make fun of Mr Carmichael – His ill fitting suits of the wrong color and the wrong decade and the ridiculous way he carries himself

And for a clown trapped in a diorama without any self-awareness
The crying kind of clown, not creepy just pathetic

I thought of how it rained yesterday and I didn’t want to get wet walking to school
I thought of the family car and how the dog sleeps under it during rainstorms

A POEM

NUREMBERG INCOGNITO

When the time is right, I will reveal myself
My true colors and what I stand for
Jello on Earth is a nightmare of backbone extinction
It is mass, I could have befriended a lemming

And when the moment comes, beliefs that can no longer be snuffed out at the birth point by specialists, obstetrician-like, they can’t cancel something bigger than an open mouth or an open mind

He could have failed in his art
He could have baked cookies
But when the established contact is as a lightning rod
Bolts did indeed strike twice

A POEM

FOR PETER WHO WAS CRITICALLY INJURED BY A DRUNK DRIVER

Cracked ribs and a broken neck
Crushed collarbone and blood dripping out of one ear
Fractured skull, internal injuries

Peter went to a birthday party earlier in the evening then he came home then he went back
Peter standing with a friend outside a cafe when a drunk man backed into them
Peter falling beneath the wheels of the drunk’s car

Peter under 24 hour sedation
They put a metal plate at the base of his spine
But they are not doing anything else
He is not expected to pull through and it might better for all if he didn’t
His mother whispered his name in his ear and tears appeared at the corners of the eyes of a comatose son